The present invention relates to calendrical devices, such as desk calendars and appointment books, and, more particularly, to a calendrical device that can selectively provide day and corresponding date information for successive years.
A number of calendrical devices are known which furnish a variety of calendaring information, such as days and their corresponding dates, selected daily hours or any combination of this information. Typical examples of devices of this nature include loose-leaf or pad-style desk calendars, appointment books, diaries and planners. Each of these devices normally contains a number of individual pages containing calendrical information. Calendrical devices of this type are also often incorporated into a variety of other publications, such as organizers, budget books and the like.
These known devices do, however, have disadvantages. For example, they are generally capable of preserving the correspondence between days and dates for only the particular calendar year designated on the individual pages of the calendrical device. This stems from the fact that the day corresponding to a given date is variable from year to year by an increment of one day for any two successive regular calendar years. Moreover, in the event that the first of any two successive years is a Leap Year, the increment for the second (i.e., non-Leap) year increases to two days for the period Jan. 1 to Feb. 28. On the other hand, if the second of any two successive years is a Leap Year, the increment for the second (i.e., Leap) year increases to two days for the period Mar. 1 to Dec. 31. Thus, for instance, an appointment book intended for use in the Leap Year 1988 and identifying each day and corresponding date on each separate page would not provide the proper correspondence between days and dates for the 1989 calendar year. Consequently, an individual that purchased the appointment book at some intermediate point in the year would be effectively deprived of the benefit of being able to use it for a full calendar year without personally editing the book in order to ensure proper day and date correspondence.
These disadvantages tend to be particularly costly to businesses that sell calendrical devices. For a retail business, the marketability of these devices tends to decrease with the progression of the calendar year. Thus, businesses often have a large inventory of calendrical devices which they must sell at a discount or seek to return to the manufacturer. Correspondingly, manufacturers are typically forced to accept returns of calendrical devices which have lost their marketability but are otherwise of good quality. They may also have to cut a new die for each calendar year in order to manufacture a calendrical device suitable for a succeeding year.
One approach toward addressing these disadvantages has been to add an extra calendar year of day and date pages to the calendrical device so as to make it useable for two years. This approach, however, does not compensate for the reduced utility of portions of the calendrical device having day and date information relating to days and dates that already occurred by the time an individual begins using the device. This approach also may prove undesirable in the case of publications, such as budget books, which may have other informational sections intended to be used only in a single calendar year.
Another approach has been to insert a series of master calendar years as part of the index section of the calendrical device. Thus, a calendrical device intended for use in the calendar year 1988 may have an index containing master calendar years 1989 through 1990. This, however, requires the individual to constantly refer to the master calendar in order to obtain the proper day corresponding to a date in 1989 or 1990.
It should, therefore, be appreciated that there has existed a definite need for a cost effective and simple calendrical device that can provide the proper day corresponding to a given date for successive years and, thereby, allow an individual to effectively use the device for a full year or more, irrespective of time of purchase of the device during that year.